[solved] a "permanent" home for srcdir, via makepkg

Question

I use a very low-bandwidth connection at home... it is as good as dial-up. When updating packages from AUR, I see many of them get a lot of data via git and hg. Some remember to limit the data using --depth=1, and some don't -- but that's beside the point Currently, I see that it is all downloaded to a directory in /tmp, and deleted soon after the package is installed. Some other packages download the source tar, and build from it. If there is any error in building it, it deletes all that it has done, and I have to download it again to attempt to fix it.
3 questions:
1. In makepkg, if I set the srcdir to /usr/src, and remove the rm -rf $srcdir, are there any downsides to doing this? (... besides the fact that I would have to clean up /usr/src for old and/or deleted packages myself, and that an update to pacman will over-write my changes.)
2. Can the pacman source be changed to make this a configuration option? (... defaulting to srcdir in /tmp.)
3. Or even better... can yaourt be changed to have an --import option for updates?
I could have gone ahead and made the change (in 1) on my own system... but I am quite new to Arch, and am not aware of the various interdependencies. I did not want to risk running ahead with this and cluttering up (or nuking)  my system beyond repair.
Last edited by prash (2011-12-30 04:36:17)

Answer 1

It won't overwrite your changes because makepkg.conf is in the backup array ('Backup Files' at the bottom)
[karol@black ~]$ pacman -Qii pacman
Name : pacman
Version : 4.0.1-1
URL : http://www.archlinux.org/pacman/
Licenses : GPL
Groups : base
Provides : None
Depends On : bash glibc>=2.14 libarchive>=2.8.4 curl>=7.19.4 gpgme
pacman-mirrorlist
Optional Deps : fakeroot: for makepkg usage as normal user
Required By : expac-git nosr-git package-query-git packer pacman-contrib
pacmanxg-bin pkgstats yaourt-git
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 3412,00 KiB
Packager : Dan McGee <[email protected]>
Architecture : i686
Build Date : pon, 21 lis 2011, 05:04:37
Install Date : pon, 21 lis 2011, 21:24:59
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : Yes
Description : A library-based package manager with dependency support
Backup Files:
MODIFIED /etc/pacman.conf
MODIFIED /etc/makepkg.conf
so the new config will be created as makepkg.conf.pacnew - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … save_Files
Yaourt has its own configs. You can tell yaourt to build somewhere else, use --tmp commandline switch or edit /etc/yaourtrc, uncomment and change
#TMPDIR="/tmp"
to somewhere else.